NASA Finds Evidence of "Soaking Wet" Mars with Rover

[Phobos]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/space/03/02/mars.findings/index.html

NASA scientists say the Mars rovers have found what they were looking for -- hard evidence that the red planet was once "soaking wet."

p.s. Thanks to Evo for the heads-up on this.

 

[Njorl]

It will be interesting to see speculation about what happened to the water. Underground lakes? Absorbed into rocks? Evaporated, hydrolyzed and lost to space?

Njorl

 

[LURCH]

I watched the webcast, they said they've also found sulfates that could be examined by a later mission to finding fairly definite proof of past life.

 

[Zero]

Woohoo!

 

[Lord Flasheart]

Originally posted by Njorl
It will be interesting to see speculation about what happened to the water. Underground lakes? Absorbed into rocks? Evaporated, hydrolyzed and lost to space?

Njorl

Perhaps the environment became unstable due to catastraphic activities, (E.G. volcanoes, asteriod bombardment, Texan-equivalant of Mars elected to presidential office, et cetera.) and the iron core melded with the water. Maybe Valles Marineris might have been a bridge between the core and the oceanic crust. A crust-core link would cool down the planet, leave carbon-based gas emissions, and cause iron oxide to form throughout the planet's soil.

I suppose this will encourage both robotic and crewed missions to our mysterious neighbour.

 

[Nereid]

Originally posted by Njorl
It will be interesting to see speculation about what happened to the water. Underground lakes? Absorbed into rocks? Evaporated, hydrolyzed and lost to space?

The most likely is permafrost, which is at, or close to, the surface pole-ward of ~60^o to ~80^o, and is increasingly deep at lower latitudes. How deep is the permafrost? The top ~200m is dry ('ice free'), with permafront at ~450m at equatorial latitudes. How do we know this? Rampart craters - their distribution by depth and latitude [Hartmann*, p100].

A lot of water was lost to space, and some is certainly hydrolysed.


*William K. Hartmann "A Traveler's Guide to Mars"

[Edit: checked Hartmann re permafrost, edited appropriately]

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Please update your estimates for Drake's variables.

 

[Nereid]

Ward and Brownlee

Anyone read Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee's "Rare Earth"?

Very interesting, especially http://www.aip.org/pt/vol-53/iss-9/p62.html .

Oh, and it takes a somewhat different look at the Drake equation ...